


Crossing Over

by Jennichi



Series: Bancoran/Maraich 30 Kisses Challenge [2]
Category: Patalliro!
Genre: 30 Kisses Challenge, Berlin Wall, M/M, Spies & Secret Agents, Theme #25 Fence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-06
Updated: 2019-01-06
Packaged: 2019-10-05 03:57:35
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,733
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17317646
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Jennichi/pseuds/Jennichi
Summary: There was something of the predator about Maraich, but if you weren’t trained to see these things you would miss it. For all appearances he was a teenager with an outrageous mane of curly red hair and slightly tilted eyes that spoke of the Far East--Russian steppes or Chinese silks. His expression was always set and serious, perhaps too intent, as if he suspected he was constantly being watched and evaluated.He was.





	Crossing Over

There was something of the predator about Maraich, but if you weren’t trained to see these things you would miss it. For all appearances he was a teenager with an outrageous mane of curly red hair and slightly tilted eyes that spoke of the Far East--Russian steppes or Chinese silks. His expression was always set and serious, perhaps too intent, as if he suspected he was constantly being watched and evaluated.

He was.

The British Service might allow the viper to curl up to its bosom, but they would never completely trust it. Sanders, head of MI6, was mostly convinced of the boy’s faithfulness. So long as Major Bancoran vouched for him, Sanders was content. His counterparts in other branches and his superiors were not so easily convinced.

For his part, Maraich seemed unaffected by the constant surveillance. He did his job, and he did it well. When he did lose that carefully constructed composure, the results were usually very loud. Bancoran took the brunt of his temper, but that was only fair, as he tended to be the one to set the boy off. Maraich wasn’t fond of infidelity, and Bancoran couldn’t really help himself.

On this particular day, the major and Maraich were working in East Berlin. This was before the Wall fell. The Cold War was raging silently around the globe and things were tense. They had crossed over to the eastern end of the city using falsified papers without any trouble, and their business had gone smoothly. It was on the return run that everything began to fall apart.

Bancoran had gone ahead and gotten only a cursory glance from the guards, a check to match photographs and facts. He arrived at the safehouse as dusk fell. It was a boarding house above a bakery, and the bakery was owned by an elderly couple who had run messages for the Allies during the War. When Herr Schlitz met him half-way up the narrow stairwell, Bancoran knew something had gone wrong. The old man’s skin was nearly translucent, and his hand shook as he held out a scrap of paper with a hastily scrawled message.

“This came over the wireless, and was forwarded on to London Central” Schlitz said, and his voice was steady, something he still had control over. “That poor boy.”

Bancoran read the coded message without expression.

_Situation at crossing point. Gunshots heard by observers. No sign of Leopard. Suspected capture. Request advisement on possibility of information leak._

Leopard was Maraich’s codename. “Information leak” could only mean that someone was worried what he might reveal under torture, but their youngest agent couldn’t reveal what he didn’t know. And Maraich knew very little.

 

* * *

 

“Ban, how do I look?”

Some evening in London, with the boy twisting fetchingly, showing off the newest addition to his wardrobe and fishing for compliments. He didn’t have to try very hard. Bancoran’s eyes slid up from his open newspaper to take in the lovely creature. He didn’t smile--he never did--but something in his expression loosened.

“Gorgeous, as you well know.”

Maraich was all sleepy eyes and pouty lips. “Kiss me?”

No, he didn’t have to try very hard.

 

* * *

 

Bancoran stood for several long minutes on that stairwell, turning the possibilities over in his mind. Schlitz watched him, looking for clues in his closed-off face. The German and his wife had grown fond of the boy, no matter how peculiar he might be, and he worried.

“What will you do?” he asked the agent.

Bancoran stirred. “Nothing, for now.”

“Nothing?” Schlitz was incredulous. “But-“

“I wait for orders!”

The major shoved roughly past the older man and stomped up to his room. He slammed the door as he went. Perversely, this show of anger encouraged Schlitz; Bancoran wasn’t as unaffected as he tried to appear. He wouldn’t wait long.

In fact, he wasn’t waiting at all. Bancoran was loading his gun and double-checking his already prepared kit. A bit of shoving moved the heavy oaken desk beneath the steepled window. After checking for watchers with a small mirror, Bancoran shoved his bag out. It landed with a muffled thump. He seldom tied his hair back, but for this gymnastic exercise he would need it out of the way; it was pulled back in a heavy braid reaching nearly to his knees. It took a few tries to get his broad-shoulders through the narrow frame, but with some twisting and a few grunts he made it. He hung, dangling, then dropped three stories to land light as a cat on his feet.

Trying to sneak over the Berlin Wall was folly; it just wasn’t done. He grimly made his way to the smallest checkpoint and surveyed it from the shadows. His papers wouldn’t get him through a second time, and he couldn’t wait for a replacement sent from Central. A frontal assault wasn’t possible, the guards at the gates were too vigilant, and even at this small gate he was heavily outnumbered.

The major’s skin was fair, very fair. His veins stood out in clear contrast, to the point where his eyelids appeared blue in the right light. He set about blacking his face with a homemade mixture of grease and soot that he always carried on him in a small, battered tin. His clothing was a mix of blacks and grays, the easier to blend in with the concrete jungle, and not the severe uninterrupted black that screamed “intruder”!

There was a building very near this particular gate, which had the unfortunate distinction of being right in the path of the intended wall on that particular August night in 1961 when it had gone up. Subsequently, the Wall ran right through it, and the building was bricked up and left derelict. This was Bancoran’s ticket into East Berlin.

It was an older building, from a much earlier time, and was beautiful once. Plenty of character, as they said about these pre-modern buildings. Bancoran saw its tilts and irregular brickwork as a great convenience. He was able to scale up the side in no time at all. There was vicious barbed wire and broken glass in all the obvious places, but Bancoran didn’t need those hand and footholds. He was over and down the other side before anyone could observe him.

Bancoran didn’t have a clue as to where a British spy would be taken, but he knew someone who did. There was a certain lawyer in the Mitte District who had been a POW in England during the War. He had been treated well, and had made friends in all the right places. Now he was a powerful asset to the Service. Bancoran would raise holy hell back at Central for contacting the man without any safeties, but he sensed that time was running out.

 

* * *

 

Sometimes Maraich tried to resist him. When he was angry about another lover, or in a bad mood over his situation. Then he would curse and weep and hammer his fists against Bancoran’s chest.

“I hate you! I hate you! Pretty-Boy Killer,” he would spit. “Go kill some other pretty boy and leave me alone!”

Bancoran would have to sooth him like one would a wild horse-- Pet his soft skin and press kisses to his brow and eyelids. He never whispered sweet nothings, neither of them was fool enough to believe them.

Inevitably, he won the boy back. Cries of ecstasy mixed with “no”s which had become meaningless long before. Temper tamed and turned to more productive things. Maraich was never boring.

 

* * *

 

Herr Amsel was not pleased to be woken at two in the morning by a shadowy form hovering beside his pillow. It hissed at him in blunt, rude German: “Where are the holding facilities for interrogation? For suspected spies? For suspicious Westerners?”

“Who are you?” Amsel demanded. “I don’t know what you are talking about.”

“MI6, and if you think I have identification on me you’re mad,” Bancoran replied. “Now hurry, tell me!”

“I told you, I don’t know-“

“My codename is Mastiff, I was in East Berlin earlier today on a mission; you’d have heard of it.”

Amsel paused, then shook his head. “I’m sorry, but-“

“My partner was captured. He’s only a boy, Goddamnit!”

Now there was sweat gathering on the German’s brow. “I-“ He slumped. “Alright, listen carefully…”

It turned out to be fairly close by, which was perhaps what had made Amsel so very nervous. Bancoran didn’t discount his worry, but he didn’t have time to pay it much attention. As the sky lightened with false dawn, he surveyed the nondescript library. Somewhere in the maze of storage basements that the old building contained there was a group of rooms that had a more sinister purpose. That was all that Amsel had been able to tell him.

It was still early enough that the city slept, but the quiet wouldn’t last much longer. Bancoran had taken the time to remove the blackener from his face and change into undistinguished street clothes. He knew he could never blend into a crowd, but there were things you could do to stop yourself from being immediately noticeable.

The grand institution wasn’t yet open, so Bancoran made himself an entrance from a back window with a serviceable glasscutter. There were men in the lower levels. Nothing unusual in and of itself, but they didn’t look like any librarians Bancoran had ever seen. Especially not with AK-47s slung over their shoulders. He played cat and mouse with them for a while, careful to remain unseen. Sounds filtered down from the floors above, the library was stirring to life.

It was practically an accident, how he found Maraich. He was moving down a narrow corridor, testing door handles as he went, ready to duck out of view if a soldier came into sight. One yielded beneath his hand, but only because a huge bear of a man was coming out. They both froze in astonishment, and then Bancoran used the man’s own riffle-butt to slam him upside the head. He fell with an alarming thud.

“…Ban?”

Bancoran jerked up from searching the man, peering over his slumped form and into the dimly lit room. There! It was his missing boy, in a corner, chained to an old pipe that ran up the length of one wall.

“Ban!”

“Shhh… Quietly, Maraich, quietly. I’ve got you.”

**Author's Note:**

> Continued in "Night Flight."


End file.
